


Time ticks until it tocks

by akaashook



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Clock AU, I blame Twitter, M/M, author had multiple existential crises while writing, author is so tired, bless gravity, hour hand! sakusa, minute hand! atsumu, the MCD in this stands for Major Clown Deeds too, they tick and tock until they don't anymore and that's all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-14 18:07:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29300145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akaashook/pseuds/akaashook
Summary: It was between a tick and a tock that Sakusa Kiyoomi and Miya Atsumu met the first time.
Relationships: Miya Atsumu/Sakusa Kiyoomi
Comments: 13
Kudos: 72





	Time ticks until it tocks

**Author's Note:**

> I REGRET EVERYTHING BUT I HOPE YOU DON'T REGRET READING IT
> 
> English is still not my first language and I wrote this in an hour that felt like a fever dream so forgive me

If you asked the dictionary, it would tell you that time is the indefinite continued progress of existence and events that occur in an irreversiblesuccession from the past, through the present and into the future.

If you asked a person, they would probably let out a bitter laugh and tell you that time is never enough. Some of them might say it’s too much. Maybe others won’t care.

For human beings life is a race against the clock.

However, the truth is the clock couldn’t care less about humans.

The clock cares about ticks and tocks and nothing else.

And it was between a tick and a tock that Sakusa Kiyoomi and Miya Atsumu met the first time. 

It was quick, a matter of a minute or a little less, they just got to exchange names before Atsumu had to walk away. They were inexperienced, they didn’t expect to meet again.

The second time they crossed paths Atsumu asked for his number. 

Sakusa had to take some seconds to sort out his thoughts. He turned his eyes towards the other, giving him a lazy once over. Reluctantly, he admitted to himself that Atsumu was pleasant to look at: a tall yellow hand, shrinking a bit around the waist, his eyes were deep and bright pools of honey colored steel, his blond hair sported a crown that had the form of an arrowhead, one that mirrored the one Sakusa had. But Sakusa was a hand of another breed, he wore darker colors, layers and layers of dark metal, two little dots on his forehead, two black holes instead of the pupils.

“Quick Omi, ya know we don’t have all day”

“It doesn’t matter” 

“But I wanna know yer number”

“It’ll change in an hour, it’s not worth it” he said, an echo of sadness cracking his voice.

“I don’t care, tell me” he whispered, then smiled softly as he started moving forward “I’ll remember, I’ll keep count”

Sakusa’s mouth fell open, his deep irises focused on Atsumu and only on him, as if they were unable to look any other way. Never once in his very short life, Sakusa had thought someone would care enough about him to keep the memories. His breath caught in his throat. That’s why, when he was about to reveal that secret, his words were smothered by the relentless ticks of the second hand.

Atsumu was already too far away to hear him anyway.

Sakusa wondered if he would come back. But for now, all he could do was watch Atsumu disappear behind the horizon line. 

…

They met again.

“Long time no see, Omi-kun” Atsumu’s grin was as bright as the sun rays filtering through the curtains of the window right in front of them.

“Ten” Sakusa blurted out quickly.

“What?”

“Ten” he repeated “It’s my number. Don’t you dare forget it”

“I won’t” Atsumu promised.

...

He kept the promise.

…

Months passed. Or at least, what people call months passed. Ironically enough, a clock doesn’t care about time. 

There was no need, for hands like Atsumu and Sakusa, to part their life into small units of variable duration. Days, weeks, years...those were things human beings had created to anchor themselves to sanity once they came face to face with existence’s inexorability.

It was common knowledge, after all, that humans fear what they cannot control.

So they prefer thriving in an illusion of freedom, deceiving themselves into believing they hold the reins of implacability, into thinking they can restrain what’s relentless.

But somewhere, in the depths of their minds, they were conscious of defeat: they were destined to exist chained to the past, slaves to the present, in the temporary shiver of anticipation that precedes the future.

It is cruel, the way this applies to their creations too.

“It doesn’t make sense, why do you keep coming back?” Sakusa asked him once, after making sure Atsumu was within earshot.

“For the same reason ya never leave, Omi-kun” Atsumu smirked, as if he knew something more than him. 

Maybe he did. All things considered, Atsumu was always running ahead of Sakusa.

They had different ways of exploring the world around them. Atsumu was fast, he was unstoppable, always living by the minute. He never looked back, hungry to experience it all on his skin. Sakusa, on the other hand, walked a path of slowness and steadiness, breathing his surroundings in, treasuring the memories as he projected into the future, always seeing things through an end.

But they were partners, living a life of complementarity: Sakusa waited and Atsumu remembered. 

That was how they worked.

That was how they danced.

It was a back and forth of lines.

“You know what time it is?”

“Let me think” Sakusa pretended to consider “I don’t care o’clock?”

“Ahh ya almost got it, try again”

“Shut up”

“I’ll give one last chance, ya know what they say...third time’s a charm” Atsumu winked.

Sakusa scowled.

“Would ya look at the time” Atsumu said right before hurrying forward “I gotta go, see ya in an hour and five minutes, Omi-kun”

They had the choreography memorized, they had adjusted their feet to handle the ruthless rhythm of destiny.

But there was a malevolent form of irony in living days that lasted twenty-four hours, but being able to meet only twenty-two times.

Twenty-two steps: their dance.

They kept spinning around twelve dark numbers, tattooed on the face of the clock, their clock.

Just a few minutes to meet, reach out, and say goodbye.

They never touched. They couldn’t. Not when they led an existence of parallelity. Not when the sun can’t kiss its moon.

They knew proximity but they would never know intimacy.

That was their curse.

A clock works for time, but time would never work for the clock.

It just keeps ticking and ticking and ticking...until it stops. 

It’s slow. 

Painfully slow.

Unfairly slow.

“You’re late” Sakusa told Atsumu.

“You noticed too, huh?”

“Atsumu” a sense of urgency permeated Sakusa’s voice “Are we...

“I don’t know Omi” he drawled “It’s just...this position, this angle, this timing...they feel wrong”

“We’re getting older” Sakusa stated.

Atsumu lowered his gaze.

If he focused hard enough on the sounds, he could perceive the regular motions of the wheels turning behind their backs. 

“The batteries Kiyoomi...they’re dying”

“So are we”

That was their curse.

They worked for humans, but humans would never work for them.

And when things get useless humans replace them.

“Maybe they will just change the batteries and we’ll be fine” Atsumu raised one last flag of hope, his breath slowly abandoning his lungs.

“They won’t, you saw them bring in that new digital clock too. We made fun of it together” Sakusa gave him a sad smile.

Atsumu laughed “We did”

Silence crawled its way into the cracks left open by the second hand. It had started walking in a slower way too. Its tick, once a glorious hymn to existence, had become a distant resonance.

And what’s a clock without its hands?

What’s a hand without its tick?

What’s a tick without its tock?

“O..m-mi” Atsumu stuttered.

It had started.

At least they would go down together, breathing the same infinity that separated their beings.

“Atsumu” Sakusa whispered, his throat feeling like dust, carrying the weight of the same sand that had inhabited the bodies of those hourglasses they considered their ancestors.

“I-I want ya t-to kno..ow, Omi” Atsumu looked at him with those deep eyes, still as bright as life as he uttered those last words of death in the nick of time.

“This c-clock is my ho...me. 

T-that glass c-ceiling is my home. 

These numb...ers are...my home. 

You are my hom-

…

Defeated by the wonders of modernity, they were hidden under a veil of oblivion and left alone.

It was a lonely place, a domain of stillness and dust. A kingdom of long-forgotten memories.

But they weren’t forgotten. 

Not by gravity.

Gravity. Their only ally in their race against time, against the meaning of their own existence.

Gravity. A friend who took their hands and brought them down down down, until they were cradled in each other’s warmth for one last, eternal time.

Miya Atsumu and Sakusa Kiyoomi’s story wouldn’t be told.

They had burned bright and, as every majestic flame, their ashes had been left dancing among the wings, dispersed on the infinite roads of the earth.

Miya Atsumu and Sakusa Kiyoomi’s future would be motionless.

But it would have been fine.

Because they were together.

Because their love knew no time.

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I HOPE YOU LIKED THIS, I REALLY REALLY HOPE YOU DID.  
> I WILL GO AND STUDY FOR EXAMS AGAIN, AND MAYBE WORK ON A FIC THAT DOESN'T EMANATE CURSED ENERGY.
> 
> HAVE A GOOD DAY!!


End file.
